In recent years, there has been raised an interest in the security such as the personal identification technique using biometrics. A personal identification method utilizing the biological information of a human being employs a face, a voiceprint, a fingerprint, an iris and so on. Among them, the technique employing the face is featured in that it can identify the person without any mental or physical burden and can be easily used. Moreover, the face image is the feature for the decision that is means for the human being to identify and discriminate in the various biometrics.
The face identifying technique finds its application not only for securities but also for improving the conveniences in the interface so that the personal identification technique is utilized for the system to match the user. However, most conventional proposals thus far made are conscious of the securities so that the “registering operations” and the “updating operations” explicitly occur. In order to configure more convenient interfaces, it is necessary to omit the explicit “registering operations” and “updating operations”.
In Japanese Patent Application Publication (KOKAI) No. 2002-288670, there is a disclosure the setting of the state of a device, which is adjusted to a person in front of an electronic device. A device to set a seat by identifying the face of the driver of a vehicle is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Publication (KOKAI) No. 2004-54580. These inventions have a function to register, in case the user cannot be specified, the user newly in a database. In Japanese Patent No. 3590285, on the other hand, there is disclosed a method in which when an unregistered passenger passes by, the passenger is newly registered in the database so as to identify the passenger.
However, several problems arise in case those automatic registrations are made.
(1) When the identification is mistaken, another person may be set, but this recovery method is not disclosed.
(2) In case the face identification is mistaken although the face has been registered, the person may be identified as a new person. However, this method has failed to tell the mistake to the system.
(3) In order to improve the precision for the face identification, the automatically updating method is needed. In case, however, the system identifies the person erroneously, a problem is that data of another person is mixed into that of a registered person.
(4) In the case of the automatic registration, one person may be doubly registered. This makes it necessary to integrate and discard the person's dictionary for maintenances. As a process for coping with the possibility that the identification is mistaken, Japanese Patent No. 3590285 discloses means for asking the person to confirm himself/herself. However, since this means is aimed at security application, it is an invention configured to deny the person based on the identification result, and therefore it does not suit for interface application.
In the system having the personal identification function which does not perform the registrations as the explicit operations, the invention has an object to simplify the confirmation of the identification result and to improve the conveniences for dictionary updating operations.